One customer was willing to sink $500 - $700 into an old Schwein mountain bike -- really just a frame with some parts hanging on it, as a better alternative than buying the kind of new bike you can get for $500 these days. She wasn't exactly wrong, although the platform she was working from wasn't exactly a piece of buried treasure. I gave her numerous opportunities to bail before either of us committed precious life and resources to the project, but she was determined. The total was $700, not $500, but she was pleased that it was in the range she had estimated. And it's not too bad, even if the frame is scratched and rusty, and it's not the finest example of the components of its day.
Before the coronavirus broke out around here, I had already had to troubleshoot someone's modern marvel of a 'cross bike, which he had fitted with a Wolf Tooth Tan Pan adapter to make a Shimano mountain derailleur work with a Shimano road brifter.
Back in the olden days, if a person wanted a mountain derailleur on their road bike, we hung a mountain derailleur on their road bike. But we're talking really olden days, before the shifting was a system, excruciatingly designed to function only under perfect compatibility with every other piece. Life is much better now for riders, because everything is just so precise and responsive and user friendly. (I think I just threw up a little).
Almost nothing comes with handy printed instructions anymore. You get a little card saying "visit our website for complete instructions." If you're really lucky you get a document with diagrams, that you can read, re-read, skim, and contemplate. If not, you get some spiffy guy in a clean apron performing the simplest form of the procedure on the newest, cleanest example of the product in a video that you have to watch over and over.
Techie troubleshooting like this shares workstand time with greasy junk that looks like its owner lubes it by dropping it into oil rig blowouts.
(Post interrupted by the need to go to work.)
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